Frank Herbert

There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such demands. 'I already know the important things!' we say. Then Changer comes and throws our old ideas away.

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

There are times when the only correct thing is to do nothing, to wait.

The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.

The most persistent principles of the universe are accident and error.

You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.

The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.